The motto on the West Pediment above the entrance to the US Supreme Court building in Washington, DC. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
June 3, 2024 by David Silverberg
On March 5, 1770 eight British soldiers opened fire on a threatening mob in Boston in what was then the Massachusetts Colony. Three people in the crowd were killed instantly, eight were wounded and two died later.
The incident is known in American history as the Boston Massacre.
It was an important event in America’s march toward revolution. But almost as important as the incident itself was its aftermath, when American colonists, intending to demonstrate to the world that they were capable of administering impartial justice in their courts, put the British soldiers on trial.
The man who stepped forward to defend the soldiers was John Adams, a prominent lawyer, patriot and no lackey of the king. But Adams fully understood that America, to be credible as a self-governing entity, had to show that whatever the political passions of the moment, law had to prevail over all.
Adams capably defended the soldiers. Six were acquitted; two were convicted of manslaughter and given reduced sentences of having their thumbs branded. The commanding captain, Thomas Preston, was tried separately and acquitted since he had not given an order to fire.
Adams faced intense criticism for his willingness to defend the soldiers but he understood the principle he was defending and its importance to America.
“The Part I took in Defence of Cptn. Preston and the Soldiers, procured me Anxiety, and Obloquy enough,” he wrote on its third anniversary. “It was, however, one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested Actions of my whole Life, and one of the best Pieces of Service I ever rendered my Country.”
The Boston Massacre was an important step in America’s march to independence; but the Adams defense was almost as critical in laying the cornerstone for a nation and a new society founded on the principle of the rule of law.
So important is that principle that it is engraved on the pediment above the entrance to the US Supreme Court building in Washington, DC: “Equal justice under law.”
Law and its impartial administration is both the roof protecting the United States from above and the absolute foundational bedrock sustaining it below, enabling a functional, rational, democratic society.
Now law itself—and everything that John Adams and the founding patriots worked to achieve—is under attack because of a verdict in a court case in New York that found former President Donald Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records.
During the trial Trump lambasted and insulted the judge, the judge’s family, the prosecutor and the court system itself for a variety of what he considered sins. He, his attorneys, and his witnesses dripped with contempt for the whole proceeding and those conducting it. But when it was over and he had resoundingly lost and been found guilty, he attacked the trial as “rigged.”
Trump has always attacked anything that hasn’t gone his way as “rigged” and illegitimate—like elections. There is no surprise there.
The Florida enablers
But it’s not just Trump trying to bring down the very notion of law and justice. An army of sycophants, serfs and supporters are taking up his chorus and are seeking to discredit, overturn and destroy the rule of law—and Florida elected officials, including those from Southwest Florida, are in the front ranks.
Last Friday, May 31, eight United States Republican senators issued a statement.
The senators pledged not to vote for any increase to domestic appropriations or spending bills that “funds partisan lawfare;” they will not vote to confirm any political or judicial appointees; nor will they allow any “expedited consideration and passage of Democrat legislation or authorities that are not directly relevant to the safety of the American people.”
The reason for this stubborn refusal to do the nation’s business? As they put it: “The White House has made a mockery of the rule of law and fundamentally altered our politics in un-American ways.”
Included among the eight were both of Florida’s senators: Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.).
This is richly ironic on a number of levels, most prominently because they are taking these steps precisely because Biden and the US justice system are defending the rule of law and the nation’s politics from un-American crimes by Trump and his minions.
It’s also ironic that what these senators term “lawfare,” a favorite term of Trump and his Make America Great Again (MAGA) cultists, is the simple administration of justice. This supposed “lawfare” is applied to just one man—Trump.
(These protestations are also ironic coming from Rubio, who was so humiliatingly savaged by Trump in the past.)
The statement is a transparent and hypocritical attempt by these politicians to curry favor with the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and the MAGA base. But it’s also an expression of the weird, circus-mirror world of Trump, where the application of law is “mockery” and an effort to enforce the rules and punish criminality is “un-American.”
The same impulses and hypocrisies appear to have driven Southwest Florida’s congressmen to similarly denounce the New York verdict.
Upon the announcement of the verdict Rep. Greg Steube (R-17-Fla.) immediately stated on X: “A disgrace to our judicial system and constitutional protections of equal justice for all. Americans see right through the Democrats’ scheme. This is nothing but election interference. President Trump will get justice on appeal.”
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-26-Fla.), usually the most sober and moderate Southwest Florida representative, similarly fell into line.
“The case against former President Trump is an obvious and blatant travesty of justice and a political witch hunt,” he wrote on X. “This is a direct threat to our democracy. This case should never have seen the light of day.”
In a lengthier statement he denounced the trial as “a tactic commonly used by dictators against their political adversaries” and accused the Biden administration and New York prosecutors of “focusing on bringing down a former president and GOP candidate for president. It is clear that this political sham of a trail [sic] has been centered on destroying a candidate rather than fighting actual crime.”
But of Southwest Florida’s representatives, none was more voluble—or extreme—than Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.). He’s been sending out a torrent of propaganda on X and speaking on every media platform that will host him to firmly establish himself as a leading Trumper. In Trump’s vice presidential replay of his television show “The Apprentice,” Donalds clearly hopes that he’s still a candidate so he’s been trying to firmly establish his unthinking and unblinking loyalty to the now-convicted felon.
“What happened in NY is disaster verdict by a crooked judge and a crooked prosecution. Donald Trump is innocent. To hell with what the jury said,” Donalds stated on X immediately after the verdict.
He followed up in a later post: “What happened in NY is a TRAVESTY. Biden’s FAILED as president & rogue prosecutors are now persecuting his chief political opponent. This is not about Republican or Democrat. This is about the political weaponization of our courts, our future as a nation & the American people. America, this is what a political prosecution looks like. Remember in November!”
“You CANNOT respect this legal process when it was rigged from the jump,” he raged the day after the verdict. “REMEMBER: They could not even identify the underlying crime. This legal process was not fair to President Trump & did not protect his constitutional rights.”
Donalds’ denunciations were particularly interesting given his direct attacks on the American justice system: statements like, “To hell with what the jury said” or “You CANNOT respect this legal process” or his charge that the trial “did not protect his constitutional rights,” when Trump could have testified in his own defense and declined to do so.
But all this is especially ironic given Donalds’ reaction to the Trump mob’s invasion of the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when Donalds was in the building.
“We are a nation of laws that have governed this exceptional Constitutional Republic for more than two centuries, and no amount of anger should ever compromise that,” he wrote then. “Our party has always been a party that respects our brave law enforcement, the Rule of Law and the institutions that make America the greatest country to ever exist.”
Apparently three years later those truths don’t apply when it comes to Donald Trump—at least as far as Donalds is concerned.
Analysis: Past and future
This is not the first time in recorded history that a prominent politician has been charged with crimes he disdained and had his followers argue he is above the law.
In 49 BCE Julius Caesar was charged by the Senate with violating Roman law and ordered to return to Rome alone to face charges. However, he felt that his victories and his “dignitas,” his sense of self-worth, put him above the law.
Instead of obeying, he crossed the Rubicon River with his legions and marched south, captured the city and ultimately made himself dictator for life. At that point the only way he could be deposed was by death and he was assassinated in 44 BCE.
It was an example—and a warning—of where societies go when the rule of law is usurped.
But last week’s Trump trial, the verdict and the reverberations can be put into a much larger context.
Why does a world that seemed so stable, so invulnerable and so established now seem in such a deadly and uncertain flux?
The world being attacked is the one that emerged victorious from the defeat of Fascism in 1945 and the fall of Communism in 1991. That world was a rule-based, American-led, democratic, egalitarian, inclusive global order and culture protected by the military might and power of the United States.
But any order has its malcontents. Three individuals in particular led an assault to overthrow this global culture and the Pax Americana.
Osama Bin Laden attacked it with terror and tried to replace it with a Muslim theocracy. Vladimir Putin used the forces of the Russian Republic to try to topple American dominance and re-establish the Soviet Union. And Donald Trump tried to tear down the US Constitution, the US Congress, a US election and overthrow American democracy to assert his absolute dominance.
Today Bin Laden is dead and his movement shattered. Putin is bogged down in Ukraine and the outcome of his reconquest is in doubt. And Trump was stopped by the institutions emplaced to prevent a dictatorship, has been tried in accordance with the American judicial system and has been declared a felon by a jury of his peers.
All the politicians—whether in Southwest Florida or not—and enablers, sycophants and coconspirators disparaging the American system of justice, arguing that this man should have complete immunity from any kind of restraint, are trying to throw off the equality of all people before the law and are picking away at the bedrock foundations of the American edifice.
They know better but they do it nonetheless for petty, short-term gain.
What is worse, they seem to have no understanding of what will follow if they succeed in toppling the justice system they so hate. As noted before, the rule of law is like a sturdy building that protects its occupants from above and below. If it comes crashing down there will be nothing but rubble; no protection from any winds that blow or storms that follow.
What is more, these politicians will be every bit as vulnerable as everyone else—indeed more so. They will achieve equality but an equality of vulnerability amidst a hurricane of chaos. If they succeed in putting Donald Trump in power as a dictator, as they are ultimately trying, they will be even more subject to his whims, his rages and his retribution—and he always lashes out first at those closest to him.
President Joe Biden put it best in remarks he made the day after the verdict.
“The American principal that no one is above the law was reaffirmed. Donald Trump was given every opportunity to defend himself,” he said. “And it’s reckless, dangerous, irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict. Our justice system has endured for nearly 250 years. It is a cornerstone of America, our justice system. The justice system should be respected. We should never allow anyone to tear it down. It is as simple as that. That is America. That is who we are. That is who we will always be, God willing.”
John Adams would be proud.
Liberty lives in light
© 2024 by David Silverberg